Iraq crisis: Shia militia show of force raises tensions

Thousands of Shia militia loyal to the powerful cleric Moqtada al-Sadr have paraded through the streets of Baghdad, raising sectarian tensions amid continued fighting in areas of Iraq.

The cleric, whose Mehdi Army fought the US in Iraq for years, had called for a military parade across the country.

Correspondents say the show of force will be seen as a very disturbing development by the Baghdad government.

Sunni extremists have seized control of large swathes of territory across Iraq.

On Saturday, officials admitted that the militants - led by jihadist group Isis - had seized a strategically important border crossing to Syria, near the town of Qaim, killing 30 troops after a day-long battle.

The capture of the crossing in western Iraq could help Isis transport weapons and other equipment to different battlefields, analysts say.

Thousands of largely Shia Iraqis have volunteered to fight Isis, urged on by a call from the country's highest Shia religious authority, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

But the BBC's Jim Muir, in northern Iraq, says the impressive-looking parade of men in battle fatigues accompanied by serious military hardware will only raise sectarian tensions at at time when the government is under pressure to rally the country together against the extremists.

Analysis from the BBC's Jim Muir in Irbil

While keeping up the pressure on Baghdad from the north, where there is constant skirmishing in a belt roughly 70km (43 miles) from the capital, the militant Sunni rebels now seem to be preparing for a thrust from the west.

As well as taking the border crossing at Qaim, the rebels also say they have taken the nearby town of Qaim itself, as well as Rawa, about 70km to the east, the next stop on the Euphrates as it winds its way towards Baghdad.

South-east of Rawa, the town of Aneh also apparently fell to the militants without combat, and the Iraqi army's regional command HQ nearby is said to be surrounded.

Anbar province is heavily tribal, and the rebels say they are negotiating the handover of towns and villages without bloodshed in co-operation with local tribes.

Since January, they already control the town of Falluja, only 30km from Baghdad, and much of the regional capital Ramadi, about 40km further west.

The militants seem to be trying to connect up these two pockets and secure control of the whole Euphrates valley from the Syrian border to Baghdad.

Two government-held towns, Hit and Haditha, stand in their way along a 140km stretch of the river between Aneh and Ramadi.

If the rebels can join up those two areas and take full control in Ramadi, they would be in a position to prepare for an assault on the western approaches to Baghdad, using Falluja as the springboard.

Iraq's sectarian split

Mehdi Army fighters have rallied in Baghdad, and as here, in Najaf to the south of the capital

US Secretary of State John Kerry is expected to travel to Iraq soon to press for a more representative cabinet, hoping this could ease tensions between the country's rival Muslim sects.

Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama said Isis - which has an estimated 10,000 fighters in Iraq and Syria - had exploited a power vacuum in Syria to amass arms and resources, but denied this was because the US had not moved to back moderate rebel forces fighting President Bashar Assad.

"We have spent a lot of time trying to work with a moderate opposition in Syria, but... when you get farmers and dentists and folks who have never fought before going up against a ruthless opposition in Assad, the notion that they were in a position suddenly to overturn not only Assad but also ruthless, highly-trained jihadists if we just sent a few arms is a fantasy," he told CBS News.

The US, which pulled out of Iraq in 2011, is sending some 300 military advisers to Iraq to help in the fight against the insurgents there.

But in the face of Iraqi calls for US air strikes, the White House is insisting that there is no purely military solution to the crisis.

The BBC's John Simpson, in Baghdad, says Mr Obama believes Iraqi PM Nouri Maliki has endangered the country by ignoring Sunni concerns and governing in the interests of the Shia majority.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's call for a new government to be quickly formed aiming for "broad national acceptance" and to "remedy past mistakes" is being seen as less-than-veiled criticism of the Iraqi PM, correspondents say.

The UN estimates that about one million people have been displaced within Iraq as a result of violence this year.

About 500,000 people fled their homes in the country's second-largest city, Mosul, which Isis captured last week.

Since then, rebels have made further gains. They claim to have seized parts of Iraq's largest oil refinery, at Baiji, and have also taken seized a disused chemical weapons factory in Muthanna, 70km (45 miles) north-west of Baghdad.

On Saturday the government again denied that militants had gained access to parts of the refinery but did admit the army was facing "violent attacks" from gunmen.

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